


A Death blow is a Life blow to Some

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Conversations, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Illnesses, Nurses, Role Reversal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11008248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There had been something wrong with him from the moment he arrived at the steps of Mansion House.





	A Death blow is a Life blow to Some

“We are agreed then?” Jed asked. It was true he did not need the affirmation of the others at the table, but given what they meant to do, he preferred it.

“Byron, you concur?”

“Damn me but I do, Foster,” Hale replied, tugging at his collar, sniffing, and stroking his goatee in the series of coordinated tells that Anne had noticed from the first but which Jed had found evident after a few weeks of working alongside Byron. Hale had his faults, but he wasn’t likely to back down now.

“Nurse Mary, you are satisfied?” Jed thought of her face, how it had colored when she read what McBurney had written about her, not a letter but what other literary form to confer upon it eluded Jed. She had pressed her lips together firmly and she was suddenly the stern German matron he had once expected. She had handed him back the page as if it were corruption incarnate and had not quite looked at him when she said, “You cannot believe I encouraged this…this obscenity” and he had hurried to reassure her.

“No one could ever think that, Mary. It’s the incoherent raving of a madman.”

“Not incoherent enough. If anyone else were to see this…Jedediah, if it came to light,” she had said, stumbling over it and he understood what she imagined and how unjust the consequence would be. She would not be hurt, not again. He had burned the packet of papers, Christ, there had been so many, such profane effusion! in front of her and watched to see her resume her usual serenity, that lift to her chin and the glint in her eye that could be merry or pure steel as the mood took her. Now, it was another expression, some admixture of the two and a curious schadenfreude perhaps, a rare and beautiful complexity that he loved most in her.

“I am. It is for the best,” she replied and Anne did not wait to be asked again but chimed in as if on cue, her theatrical tone suiting her pronouncement.

“It is for the good of the hospital, for the men in our care. I am sure Miss Nightingale herself would approve it. We cannot risk the alternative.”

She meant the plans McBurney had documented in his slanted hand, to exile Byron to the dusty, dry West to languish in a barracks, to send her on a series of errands in the field which could only damage her reputation and from which there was no path to the Head Nurse position she coveted. All she had done for McBurney was nothing to him and now she was easily the most confident that he should be nothing to them. She had even suggested the Lord supported them “as we have had no typhoid here until the Major’s arrival, it might be considered a heavenly sentence, as it were.” Mary had not liked that, her Unitarian principles affronted and Jed had bristled at the deprecation of science, but it had not been worth the battle.

“All right. I will write Summers then and tell him I will resume the Chief Medical Officer position and that Byron will become XO. Nurse Mary will take on some of the administrative work so I can continue to treat the men and Miss Hastings will manage a greater number of the patients in the larger ward. And Mr. Diggs will become my apprentice and assist me in surgery while we wait for some more competent medical cadets to be sent to us, before he leaves for his own medical training in Philadelphia,” Jed said.

“And Major McBurney will be sent away,” Anne said, unable to mask her glee.

“Sent home,” Mary corrected. “We cannot care for him here, we cannot maintain the degree of quarantine we need to keep the men safe.”

Byron nodded and Jed closed his eyes for a moment. It was a lie in service of the truth, which was that McBurney was a cancer on the hospital, a danger to every member of the staff and to the patients they served. Henry had frowned when Jed told him the plan but had muttered “he would not let me rescue those men” and had shrugged instead of making the arguments Jed had expected. Samuel had said nothing much but his expression, for once, had said enough. Mary told him Charlotte Jenkins cried out, “Hallelujah, Lord, how good You are to us!” when Mary had informed her and that had been the impetus for a kind of unchecked, joyous laughter that had been in short supply lately.

“Matron will purchase the tickets and I sent the telegram via Mr. Diggs,” Jed said.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of will, Foster, rather did,” Hale interjected. Matron had not bothered to conceal the crocodilian smile she was capable of as she waved the steamship tickets in the air and Byron had not been able to resist humming “Oh, Peggy Gordon!” under his breath in response. That had been yesterday, well before this meeting was convened but it had not troubled him a whit.

“That’s settled then. Nurse Mary, shall you serve this very fine tart with the tea?” Jed asked, gesturing to the painted tray that sat beside Mary, the fluted pastry gleaming with brushed egg, surrounded by mis-matched tea-cups and saucers.

“A tart! What a treat!” Anne exclaimed. “What is it?”

“Peach,” Mary said, as she cut into the dessert, her long eyelashes lovely against her curved cheek, her hands steady in her dissection.

“Perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, sagiow wondered what it would be like if McBurney was the next to fall in my loose series "What If Someone Else Got Typhoid?" and I felt I needed to oblige. I tried to lean on the conversation in this one, versus a lot of introspection. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
